Hitachi Global Storage Technologies on Thursday quietly started to sell a yet unannounced DeskStar hard disk drive with 4TB capacity in Japan. The novelty is quite expensive, but not extremely despite of the fact that it uses components produced in flooded Thailand. Since the new 4TB drive belongs to Deskstar 5K family, it will barely attract performance enthusiasts.

Hitachi GST Deskstar 4TB hard disk drives (model 5K4000, model number HDS5C4040ALE630) have 32MB cache, use Serial ATA-III (SATA-600) interface and utilize 4KB advanced format. The Deskstar 4TB hard drives use CoolSpin technology that promises to reduce power consumption without compromising performance. Actual spindle speed of CoolSpin-based drives is not published, but some estimate that it is 5900rpm.

The 4TB internal hard drives from Hitachi are available in select stores in Tokyo, Japan, for ¥26800 ($345, €258), according to Akiba PC Hotline.

Earlier this year Hitachi already introduced hard disk drives with 1TB platters and it chances are that the Deskstar 4TB HDDs are based on those platters with areal density of 569Gb/in2. Interestingly, but so far, Hitachi has not used the new platters in 3.5" 2TB or 3TB drives.

Hitachi and Seagate have been shipping external hard disk drives with 4TB capacities for some time now and all hard drive makers have also introduced 1TB platters for 3.5" hard drives. However, Hitachi appears to be the first company to start shipping internal HDDs with 4TB capacity. Interestingly, but the Deskstar 4TB drive on sale today was assembled back in October.